Activist Courts...?

Lots of discussion about whether the recent New Jersey Supreme Court decision on gay marriage was activist or not. President Bush and the Wall Street Journal cry activism; the New York Times and Andrew Sullivan say nay. One writer at Slate says activism; another says no. Virginia senator George Allen, who seems to be against sex in novels, says activism.

Who's right? It depends on how you look at it.

When a court interprets a constitution (in the New Jersey case, its own, state constitution), it might come to a conclusion that a majority of citizens don't support. If you don't think courts should contravene public opinion (an odd view, given that the constitutions courts are bound to interpret protect minority rights), courts that do will seem activist. If you focus instead on whatever constitutional language the court is trying to interpret, and find the court's interpretation compelled by logic, you won't see activism at all.

The US Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, is instructive. In finding "separate but equal" violative of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, the court moved more quickly than public opinion (particularly in the south) might have been ready for, and certainly more quickly than Congress. By this standard, the Brown decision was activist. Was it, I ask opponents of gay marriage, therefore wrong?

If Brown was not wrongly decided -- if you support the Brown decision -- and you oppose gay marriage, you have to find a way to distinguish Brown's application of the equal protection clause with regard to blacks and education from its application to gays and marriage. I don't think such a distinction exists -- but if anyone can offer one, I'm listening.

Because I can't find that distinction, I support gay marriage. I'll go further: I disagree with those conservatives (such as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal) who argue that gay marriage is a question best left to the states. If you believe gay marriage should be best left to the states, you must also believe that separate but equal education should have been left to the states -- that is, that Brown was wrongly decided, and that separate but equal was, and remains, right.

There are arguments for going slowly on this issue (as the New Jersey court seemed to recognize, in leaving to the legislature the question of whether gay unions ought to be called marriage): respect for anti- gay marriage sentiment, no matter how wrongheaded; fear of a legislative or other backlash. But those arguments are based on tactics, not on the requirements of constitutional law.

Strange, that when a court ignores public opinion and focuses on the constitution itself, it gets tarred as activist. If that's activism, what are we going to call courts that bow to public opinion by finding a way to deny equal protection to gays?

Ah, I know. We can call them... reactionary.

Failed States, Insurgencies, and Civil Wars

Although most people agree that there is such a thing as a failed state, it's hard to agree on exactly what the term means. There is overlap between failed states, insurgencies, and civil wars, and at the margins it's impossible to tell when one becomes another, but the concepts are distinct.

To me, a failed state is one in which the central government is unable to prevent its territory from being used as a launching pad for significant acts of violence abroad. An insurgency is an armed group powerful enough to engage a country's military, but not powerful enough to threaten the government's fundamental control. When an insurgency becomes that powerful, you're probably looking at a civil war.

Let's try some examples. Taliban-era Afghanistan was not a failed state. The Taliban permitted al-Qaeda to run Afghan training camps, and welcomed Osama bin Laden as a guest. These were not failures on the part of the Taliban, but rather policy. And the conditions that led to the Taliban were not those of a failed state, but rather civil war.

Iraq in its current form is not yet a failed state. Certainly the government's reach is limited, but for now, violence there is mostly internal. I would say that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war in which the presence of foreign troops is dampening some of the violence. If that violence begins to spill across border, Iraq will be a failed state.

Various governments in Latin America are unable to control their narcotics traffickers, who are heavily armed, control significant territory, clash with government forces, and smuggle billions of dollars of their product abroad. I wouldn't argue, though, that the states in question should yet be considered "failed." If these groups continue to grow in power, the insurgencies they represent could worsen, perhaps eventually into civil war. But as long as the violence is primarily internal, we aren't dealing with a failed state.

It's widely recognized that the United States is unable to control its borders, with regard either to people or drug smuggling (I know "control" here is a controversial term. I use it to mean "achieve a desired policy outcome"). Is the US a failed state? Again, I would argue not: illegal immigration is primarily an internal matter, and the drugs smuggled into the US are consumed within US borders.

What about Mexico, then? It can't stop its people from crossing illegally into the US, right? True, but I would argue that Mexico doesn't want to stop these crossings. Illegals in the US remit a huge amount of money to relatives back home. If it's policy, however, tacit, by definition it isn't a failure. Moreover, the movement of people itself isn't violence, although it does raise the question of whether even without violence a cross-border phenomenon can become serious enough to invoke thoughts of failed states.

Lebanon, it seems to me, is the current poster child for failed states. The elected government is unable to control militias (chiefly Hezbollah); the militias control significant territory (southern Lebanon); they use that territory as a launching pad for significant acts of violence abroad (rocket attacks and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, provoking this past summer's war with Israel).

Right up there with Lebanon is Pakistan. The Pakistani government is unable to control its tribal areas, which are used by the Taliban and al-Qaeda to attack Afghanistan. If it's true that the government was unaware of A.Q. Khan's nuclear trafficking (doubtful), it raises that interesting question about non-violent but serious effects again: is a government's inability to control something as monumental as trafficking in nuclear technology and know-how something we recognize as state failure?

France is unable to control its Muslim-dominated suburbs. Attacks in those suburbs are getting worse; police describe the situation variously as an intifada and as civil war. But the attacks are internal; the "no-go zones" are not yet being used to launch significant attacks abroad. So France, it seems to me, is facing a gathering insurgency, which, given the percentage of Muslims in France and our increasingly connected, open-sourced times, could eventually become a civil war. But France is not a failed state.

There's a lot of room for discussion about the terminology in this post, I know. I'm looking forward to comments, and then to offering some policy prescriptions.

Vietnam Roars

Last week I was in Saigon, researching the next Rain book. Here are a few photos from the trip.

I was struck by many things about this remarkable city. Three stand out.

First, Vietnam is getting rich. It has a long way to go, but when you see a cosmetic surgery clinic and electronics stores are selling $4000 massage chairs, you're talking about a post-agricultural society, and then some.

Second, the business drive in Vietnamese culture is remarkable. Things may be different in the north, and I wish I'd had more time to visit more regions in the country, but Saigon is all business. Everybody wants to give you an impromptu motorcycle taxi ride, everywhere you look someone has set up an improvised street stand to sell secondhand engine parts or watches or watermelon juice. Business and capitalism seem to be part of the culture's DNA.

Third, the people I met have a positive, enthusiastic view of America and Americans. Again, things might be different in the north, but still: we killed three million Vietnamese during the war. I'm flabbergasted that I encountered no lingering ill will. I'm not sure what accounts for the lack of animus: perhaps in the south America is remembered as an ally, not an enemy (although no ill will for eventually abandoning our allies to the communists?); perhaps the culture's Buddhist roots; perhaps the Vietnamese are too busy making money and improving their lives to indulge in bitterness about the past. Still, the contrast with Muslims who are still stewing over the crusades is stunning. Any guesses on which culture has a brighter future: the one excited about tomorrow, or the one furious about yesterday?

Here's more on the country, from today's New York Times.

Remain Calm! Don't Panic!

Now Iraq's leaders are urging the US and the UK not to panic.

Question: has there ever been a time when an official urged something like, "Remain calm! There's no cause for panic!" when panic wasn't fully warranted?

(See also: "I can explain this" and "This isn't what it looks like.")

Not to worry. Not only is the Bush administration not panicking, Bush is actually assuring Iraqi Prime Minister Malaki that there are no plans to oust him (that is, that we aren't going to support a military coup). That's another one of those phrases, BTW, that's perfect for making prime ministers feel all their fears were silly and groundless: "Don't worry, Nuri, we have no plans to depose you in a military coup."

Actually, some people think a military coup would be a good idea. Personally, I doubt the Iraqi military is cohesive enough to impose order. See the excellent, clear-eyed, depressing analysis here.

There also have been reports that the White House has issued Iraq ultimatums (should that be ultimata?): crack down on militias and show other security progress, or we're outa here. The White House says there have been no ultimatums; just a "collaborative effort."

I don't think it matters much whether it's all hugs and kumbaya, or whether Bush is making Malaki an offer he can't refuse (but anyone want to be which it really is?). What's going on is, the White House is trying to develop a set of criteria by which America can leave Iraq with as much blame as possible for the debacle that follows shifted onto the Iraqis.

About a year ago, I argued that the war's architects would never be the ones to end it, because doing so would deny them the fig leaf of later being able to claim "We had turned the corner (or some other metaphor) and the shiftless, spineless administration that came after us snatched defeat from the jaws of victory." I reiterated the argument about a month ago.

But now I don't think we're going to stay in Iraq in any meaningful way all the way until January '09, when a new team takes over the White House. What's changed, I think, is that Iraq has become such a catastrophe that all elements of the Republican party other than Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are intent on ending our involvement before the next presidential election. Their fear is that, if we're still bleeding in Iraq for no discernible reason in November '08, the fig leaf Bush and the war's other architects want to keep in front of themselves will mean armageddon for the Republicans, who will probably be turfed out not just from both houses of Congress, but also from the White House and possibly a majority of governors' houses, as well. To mix a couple metaphors: Sorry about having to strip away that fig leaf, pal, but we're not letting it sink the entire Republican ship.

In sum: denied the opportunity to blame the next administration for our failure in Iraq, the administration seems to have decided to set up Malaki, instead.

At least they're not panicking.

What Now For North Korea?

In my last post, What's Kim Up To This Time?, I suggested that Kim Jung Il would hold off until closer to the US midterm elections before carrying out his threat to test a nuclear weapon. Obviously, I was mistaken, perhaps because I overlooked the timing of another important event: Japanese Prime Minister Abe's weekend summit meetings in Beijing and Seoul. As I said at the end of that post, though, the timing of the test matters less than the question of how the US should handle Kim generally. This post will suggest the necessary general policy.

The key to regulating Kim's behavior, indeed, the key to his departure or his survival, is China. China provides North Korea with oil and food without which Kim's regime couldn't survive. It follows that, without China's cooperation, we cannot achieve our policy aims in North Korea. As I mentioned in my last post, those policy aims are chiefly: (i) prevention of war on the Korean peninsula; and (ii) preventing Kim from transferring nuclear materiel and know-how.

(The previous policy objective was to prevent North Korea from going nuclear. Obviously, that objective failed. As Gavin de Becker points out in his outstanding book The Gift of Fear, what we fear is always what might happen next. Once that thing has happened, we're by definition no longer afraid of it; our fear has moved on to the next thing. So it is with policy to North Korea. We're no longer afraid of a nuclear armed DPRK; we're afraid that Kim will use his nukes or sell them).

Kim makes a lot of trouble for China, and his most recent antics have embarrassed his chief patron, who had publicly cautioned him not to proceed. Why, then, does China support him?

Because China fears two things that would follow Kim's collapse: (i) millions of desperate, starving North Korean refuges crossing into China; and (ii) a US military presence on China's border.

These are powerful fears. Can they be reduced? And are there any enticements, or other fears, that could outweigh them?

One thing China fears at least as much as the results of Kim's collapse is nuclear proliferation in Asia. If Kim survives and continues to behave as he has, within a decade, if that, China will very likely be surrounded by nuclear neighbors. A nuclear Taiwan would substantially complicate any attempt by China to capture the island by military force. And, given the countries' fraught history, China is horrified at the prospect of a nuclear Japan. Recent events, therefore, have clarified that China has to choose. Which is worse: refugees and encroaching US military power, or a nuclear South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan?

This calculus is hardly a revelation, of course; China ought to have managed to weigh the possibilities well enough even in the absence of Kim's nuclear test. But as economists like to tell us, people tend to discount the importance of future possibilities. China has traditionally been more focused on the immediate dangers of Kim's collapse than on the distant and indirect possibility of nuclear encirclement. As the possibility of nuclear encirclement becomes less distant and indirect, it will assume greater weight in China's planning.

To put it another way, China is more afraid of nuclear encirclement today than it was yesterday. If that fear comes to outweigh its fears of Kim's collapse, China will act. The question then becomes: can we do anything to reduce China's fears of Kim's collapse so that China's fears of nuclear encirclement achieve greater weight?

I think we can. For a variety of reasons, we're already drawing down our forces in South Korea. That process could be accelerated. As for refugees, we should convene a conference, perhaps in conjunction with the UN, perhaps with only the five powers most concerned with North Korea (China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the US) to prepare money and infrastructure to deal with the coming DPRK collapse. The first will reassure China about the presence of the US military on its border; the second will demonstrate that China will not have to bear the pressure and expense of a North Korean refugee crisis alone. For more, see Robert Kaplan's excellent piece "When North Korea Falls" in the October Atlantic.

Neither of these actions will be easy (getting anyone to trust us after Iraq and Katrina on our competence at disaster relief will be... difficult. Making the effort multilateral should help), nor can they be accomplished without an overall reexamination of our view of and approach to China. We need to stop thinking that there is an unbridgeable divide between democracies (exemplified by us) and authoritarian regimes (exemplified by China). The real divide is between status quo powers -- that is, powers who accept the rules of our increasingly globalized world and expect to excel in it (by which definition China is the preeminent new example), on the one hand, and powers who recognize that in a globalizing world their ideology dooms them to irrelevance, and who therefore are compelled to try to sabotage globalization's march (North Korea, al Qaeda and other Islamic fanatics), on the other. Within such a framework, a drawdown of our forces in, and their eventual removal from, South Korea makes perfect sense. And the creation of a multilateral fund, process, and logistics for dealing with Kim's inevitable collapse can take place on a broader, sufficiently sturdy foundation. For more on the US and China, I highly recommend the always insightful and outside-the-box http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/.

It's past time for South Korea, Japan, and the US to accept that sending food and oil aid to a despot like Kim is wrongheaded. We have to understand this dynamic: Kim has taken his population hostage and is starving and freezing much of it to death. He then says to us, "Send me food and oil or more people will starve and freeze!" And we comply.

But paying ransoms only encourages more hostage taking. Worse, when the hostage is the despot's own population, the ransom doesn't even save lives. A dictator like Kim knows he can hang onto power with x percent of his population starving or freezing. Higher than x percent and he'll face unacceptable unrest and other challenges to his rule. If we offer no aid, he must divert (or create) resources to keep the death rate at x percent. If we offer aid, he diverts resources to his military. Either way, the death rate stays at x as long as Kim is in power. We can't save Kim's hostage population while he is in power, and it is counterproductive to use aid to try.

If Kim's latest provocation prods the US to reassess its policy as suggested above, we may look back on the test as a positive development. After all, as long as the DPRK's nuclear capability was ambiguous, other governments were free to live in denial (that discounting of future possibilities dynamic again) about where all this was heading. If Kim's test has removed some of that denial, that's a good thing. As long as what replaces it is good thinking and sound execution.

What's Kim Up To This Time?

Last week, the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (yes, that's really what they call themselves) declared that it "will in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed." The statement claimed that "The U.S. daily increasing threat of a nuclear war and its vicious sanctions and pressure have caused a grave situation on the Korean Peninsula in which the supreme interests and security of our State are seriously infringed upon and the Korean nation stands at the crossroads of life and death."

I can't help asking... do North Korean communiques read like this in the original Korean, or is the stiltedness and bombast always inserted in the translations? You can read the full text of the Foreign Ministry's statement here.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill responded by saying, “We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it.” Huh? The CIA believes North Korea already has the bomb, acquired with the assistance of Pakistan's A.Q Khan (but certainly not with the complicity of Pakistan's government!) in exchange for missile know-how. So aren't we already living with, have we not in fact already accepted, a nuclear North Korea?

If the US already believes North Korea is nuclear armed, why would the North announce a test? The announcement must have perceived independent value, otherwise the North wouldn't have made it -- they would have just carried out a test (for substantive weapons development reasons, for example), or not, without an announcement. Also, an announcement must entail at least some risk: if the test doesn't occur, Kim looks like he's backing down, or that he doesn't have nukes to begin with; if the test is attempted and fails, it looks like those NK nukes aren't ready for prime time after all.

My theory is, the DPRK is trying to force the Bush administration to offer concessions by threatening, just ahead of midterm elections, to remove the fig leaf of nuclear ambiguity behind which the administration has been sheltering. It just wouldn't look good for Republicans, who bill themselves as the national security party, to have Kim detonate an atomic bomb on their watch. Presumably Kim knows this, and is now trying political pressure where more substantive pressure has previously failed him.

The "Midterm Surprise" theory gets a little backing from Li Dunqiu of China's State Council Development Research Center, a Cabinet-level think tank. "If the U.S. removes sanctions," Mr. Dunqiu says, "then tensions can be eased. Otherwise launching a nuclear test is unavoidable for North Korea.''

I think that can safely be translated as, "immediate concessions, or we'll cost you the midterm elections."

Some or the articles I've read say a test is expected as early as this weekend. I don't buy it. We're still a month away from the midterm elections. Why wouldn't Kim let the threat stand -- in fact, why not reiterate it -- to continue to pressure Bush and the Republican Congress? Once the test is carried out, Kim's leverage is gone.

Another possibility, of course, is that Kim isn't trying to exact concessions; he's actively trying to influence the outcome of the midterm US elections. If that's the case, again, I wouldn't expect a test right away. The elections are over a month away; I'd expect more threats first, then a test closer to the elections, to ensure that the inescapable fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons is front center in the minds of voters.

The strategy could backfire, of course: in response to a test, the Bush administration could announce stiff countermeasures, such as a blockade (which we wouldn't call a blockade; blockades are acts of war, which is why JFK called our blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis a "quarantine"), which could in turn lead to a "rally round the president" effect that would tilt elections to Republicans.

My guess is, Kim has decided it's time to remove any doubt that the DPRK is a nuclear power. China, Japan, and South Korea all claim such a move would be counterproductive, but would it? What leverage would any of them apply to a demonstrably nuclear-armed DPRK that they haven't applied already? Kim's negotiating stance will simply have gone from, "give me what I want or I'll build a nuke" to "give me what I want or I'll build more nukes... and possibly sell them, too." All the reasons behind the world's historically feckless approach to Kim will remain in place and continue to drive policy just as they have been driving it. By conducting a test, Kim can have his nukes and eat them, too.

All the North's nuclear saber rattling begs a larger question, of course, because whether the DPRK has nukes, or whether the country is merely determined to acquire them, the imperative of our policy there remains the prevention of war on the Korean peninsula and counterproliferation. So how do we achieve those twin objectives? I think that will be my next post, which I'll be writing from Tokyo.

More Verbal Tics

They're back... the phrases that make me crazy!

Verbal and oral are not the same. Verbal means words; oral means the mouth. I guess oral carries certain, uh, baggage that makes people hesitate to say it in polite company. And so, striking a blow, if you will, for linguistic accuracy everywhere, I declare, "Oral! Oral! Oral!"

Disinterested and Uninterested are cousins, not identical twins. Disinterested means you don't have a stake; uninterested means you don't care.

What's a "Think Piece?" Isn't it a given that an article is predicated on thought? So we're really talking about just... an opinion piece. And what's wrong with a nice opinion? This one, BTW, reminds me of Bush's futile and misplaced attempt to bring into vogue the term "homicide bomber" instead of "suicide bomber." When someone plants a bomb, we can assume homicide was the objective. The bomber taking his own life in the process is a distinguishing characteristic (although, sadly, increasingly less so).

Can we just say orient instead of orientate?

For God's sake, don't say "monies!" The only way to sound more incompetently self-important is to talk about "persons" instead of "people."

I like that prisons are disappearing in favor of correctional facilities (domestic) and detention centers (abroad). No one is being imprisoned, thank you very much; just detained and corrected. And how bad can that be?

What's a muscular foreign policy? The phrase seems to have the wrong focus: "muscular" is about appearances, not results. What's wrong with "strong," which describes capabilities? Or "aggressive," which describes a behavior or attitude? What's next, enhancing foreign policy with steroids?

Ikea says "temporarily oversold" instead of "sold out." How can you oversell something? Is it like overbooking a plane? Next someone will be selling "pre-owned" cars... oh, wait, they already are.

And now, from the Department of Redundancy Department...

hoary old (hoary new?)

past experience (future experience? This one even finds its way into the Economist!)

targeted assassination (random assassination?)

overhype (for when hyping it just isn't enough...)

refer back/ahead (refer is sufficient)

past history (future history?)

Why do presidents feel compelled to have "doctrines?" It seems to me that "doctrine" is just a self-important way of saying "obvious policy that anyone could have figured out." Alternatively, it can mean "Divisive and bad idea for which I'm trying to develop unstoppable momentum by attaching to it the big D word. Don't argue -- if it was good enough for Monroe, it's good enough for me."

(Don't forget, Brezhnev was reputed to have a doctrine, too. It was, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine.")

Why is it that newspapers call people fighting the Sudanese government "rebels," while people fighting the Iraqi government are labeled "insurgents"?

Can you flagellate someone else, or can you really only self-flagellate?

I always find it odd when someone feels compelled to declare himself not just married, but "happily married" (or worse, "very happily married"). Was there any doubt? Is he worried we might think otherwise? Could he be... protesting too much? I'd like to do a study on divorce rates of people who describe themselves this way. I'll bet it's higher than the norm.

In May, the Government Accountability Office released a report on America's public diplomacy efforts around the Islamic world. The report is titled, "State Department Efforts Lack Certain Communications Elements and Face Significant Challenges."

Now there's an example of clear communication, right there in the title. I wouldn't want the report to be called, "State Department Efforts to Woo the Muslim World Ineffective." Maybe the State Department has been taking its communications cues from the GAO?

Let's end on a happy note. Thomas Pfeffer of the American Heart Association in Los Angeles, says, "Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in swimming pool."

Hard to argue with that.

Terrorism: Nature vs Nurture

The recently leaked, and now partly declassified, National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and global terrorism has served as a kind of inkblot test, offering insight into the worldviews of the public and politicians who are arguing over its contents.

First, there are those of the "nature" persuasion. These people argue that terrorists are born, not made, and so our actions in Iraq or anywhere else do not -- indeed, cannot -- make terrorism worse. With regard to the NIE, the argument expresses itself this way: "It's silly to argue that the war in Iraq is making terrorism worse. After all, we weren't in Iraq on 9/11."

(For a nice illustration of the "nature" point of view, see Tony Blair's Sept 26 speech).

Second, there are those of the "nurture" persuasion. These people argue that terrorism is a response to western policies; that through its policies the west has created terrorism, and that by adjusting those policies we can ameliorate it. With regard to the NIE, the argument expresses itself this way: "Abu Ghraib, foreign soldiers doing house-to-house searches, collateral damage... all are radicalizing Muslims and creating new terrorists."

Both arguments are half right. And both are entirely wrong.

Probably there are individuals who are born to fanaticism. If they're born Muslim in the middle east, they become Islamists. If they're born Catholic in Northern Ireland, they would be IRA. The problem is in their genes, or in some equally irreducible aspect of their environment, and almost no external influence could have diverted them from extremism.

And probably there are individuals who never would have dreamed of carrying out a suicide bombing, but who decide to do so in response to some western policy, for example the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia to protect the kingdom from Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. In other words, individuals who "but for" (as the tort lawyers like to say) western policy would never have become terrorists.

What's misleading about the terrorist nature/nurture argument isn't just its fallacious assumption that all terrorists are either born or made, when a little common sense quickly suggests that both types exist. The real problem is that the argument focuses on cases that are almost certainly exceptional. After all, isn't it likely that the vast majority of people exist somewhere in the middle range of the nature/nurture continuum? They're not born to extremism, but the right combination of events can lead them into extremism's embrace. Some are more susceptible, others less, but for most people, the environment matters. So the appropriate question isn't, "are or are we not creating terrorists," but rather, "How are our actions enabling terrorism? And can we fine-tune to mitigate while still accruing the benefits of the actions in question?"

The language choices in these questions are important. We're always talking about "the terrorists" -- as though terrorist/non-terrorist is a binary category (remember "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists"?). But what enables terrorists is much more than just the people who strap on suicide vests. What about financiers? People who provide safe haven or other assistance? People who could have provided a warning or other intelligence, but now decide not to? Asking whether our policies create or don't create terrorists is misleadingly narrow. We need to ask as well whether our policies foster conditions that enable terrorism, as well.

For every suicide bomber, I'll bet there were at least a hundred active or passive accomplices and enablers. Those accomplices and enablers are the marginal cases, the fence sitters, the ones who our policies -- including our blundering in Iraq -- are most likely to tip one way or the other.

In other words, even if no western policy could possibly cause even a single additional Muslim to don a suicide vest, are we confident that no policy could tip others into mindsets and behaviors that enable the suicide bombers to carry out their atrocity?

Another problem in the debate is that nature proponents make their point too strongly. Rather than claiming that Iraq isn't worsening terrorism, they claim that Iraq can't be worsening terrorism. The first point badly needs to be discussed (Robert Kagen's piece in the Washington Post is an excellent start, IMO). The second is just silly. It flies in the face of the lessons of every counterinsurgency campaign ever conducted. If the right tactics can quell an insurgency, how could it be that the wrong ones couldn't create, enflame, and sustain one?

Here's a thought experiment. Should we airdrop pig offal and American flags onto Mecca and Medina? Why not? If our actions can't create terrorism, what difference could it make?

If you're a "nature" proponent, don't try to wriggle out of the experiment by saying "there would be no benefit." Maybe not, but if you believe our actions can't fuel terrorism, you have to accept that there would be no cost, either. In which case, the offal and flags would do no harm, right?

I think part of the reason the nature crowd tends toward a "we can't make terrorism worse" line of argument is because suggesting that we have some influence over terrorism sounds close to suggesting that we're responsible for it. But the two concepts are not the same. Effective policing can reduce the crime rate. That doesn't mean the police are responsible for crime. It does mean they're responsible for effective policing.

Let's stipulate that our actions can worsen terrorism. Let's stipulate too that we are not responsible for terrorism. Now we can get down to the hard work of asking what "worsening" terrorism really means, of examining how we might be worsening it, of weighing costs and benefits, of taking informed risks and making difficult choices.

Iraq War Increases Terror Threat

A leaked National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus of the sixteen US spy services, concludes that the war in Iraq is fueling Islamic terrorism.

The logical possibilities:

1. The NIE is wrong. The war in Iraq is beating back Islamic radicals and we should "stay the course" there.

2. The NIE is right, but the war's strengthening of Islamic radicals is an unavoidable consequence of a larger, long term strategy that will eventually weaken Islamic radicalism to below pre-war levels. IOW, some medicines make you feel sicker before they start to improve your health, and the war in Iraq is one of them.

3. The NIE is right, and if we maintain our current approach in Iraq Islamic radicalism will continue to benefit. We must therefore change our approach.

I don't see any other high level logical possibilities -- am I missing any?

Democrats have predictably (and, in my view, rightly) seized on possibility #3. It'll be interesting to see what Republicans have to say. What I've seen so far, from John McCain and Bill Frist, are variations of #2. Despite the obvious temptations, I don't see how the administration can suggest that the answer is #1; if it did, people might start asking why we're spending so much on all these intelligence services (and do we really need sixteen of them? Couldn't policymakers just read The Economist instead?). The closest the White House can reasonably come to a #1 strategy is to say that excerpts have been taken out of context -- which it has done, declaring that the New York Times report is "not representative of the complete document."

The always superb Tom Barnett has a somewhat contrary take on the import of the report. To oversimplify a bit, Dr. Barnett's argument boils down to "terrorists are going to get angry no matter what we do." This is a fair point, but if the war is indeed fueling Islamic radicalism, I think we need to measure that cost against the war's benefits, and also ask whether there are alternatives that offer a better cost/benefit ratio. You don't have to be a naysayer to ask whether there's a better way.

In related news, Iraqi political leaders have agreed to discuss a bill that would turn Iraq into three largely autonomous countries. The Kurds and Shiites want the autonomy option; the Sunnis have been blocking it. I know I'm a broken record on this, but... how are we going to keep these people married when 80% of them want a divorce?

The legislation won't take effect for 18 months after it is approved. If it's approved six months from now, it'll take effect just in time for the 2008 US presidential election. At that point, I expect both nominees will be talking about "respecting the will of the Iraqi people" and similar such rhetoric, and using the Iraqi parliament's vote for tripartite autonomy as the fig leaf we need to substantially reduce our military presence there.

So -- no surprise -- we'll be "staying the course" for as long as the war's architects are in office. We'll be changing course immediately afterward. This has nothing to do with politics and egos, of course, and is all carefully calibrated to do what's best to protect America and reduce the threat of Islamofascism.

Let's Talk Torture

It's not easy to talk torture. First, you have to get around the verbal pitfalls. Are we talking about rules, or a lack of rules? Are the people being interrogated detainees, or prisoners? Terrorists, or suspected terrorists? Prisoners of war, or enemy combatants?

I'm going to try to avoid those verbal traps by jumping straight to the HOTM. Which we can get to via two questions: (1) what is torture; and (2) does it work.

What is torture? It's easy to define torture at the margins, but the margins are always easy. An ocean view room at the Ritz Carlton Maui is not torture. Having your fingernails pulled out is.

But somewhere in the middle things become much more subjective. Is keeping someone in an uncomfortably cold room torture? What if the room has inadequate light? Is interrogating someone for four hours straight torture? Eight hours? Twenty-four? Intruding into someone's personal space? Yelling in his face? What about solitary confinement? Silence vs noise? Insults? Threats of violence?

Let's put aside the first question for a moment and examine the second. And then we'll see how they're linked.

Doe torture work? That is, does it lead to effective intelligence? I'm not sure. I've never tortured someone and I've never been tortured. But my guess is that the answer is, it depends. On the kind of information you're after; the amount of information you already have (by which you can judge the quality of what's extracted); the kind of torture employed; perhaps most of all, on the strengths, weaknesses, determination, susceptibility, and other idiosyncrasies of the person being tortured.

In other words, the honest answer to the question of "Does torture work?" is probably... sometimes.

Okay, then. Why not just employ the practice wholesale? When it doesn't work, nothing lost. When it does, much is gained.

Let's back up there a minute, and take a look at that notion of "nothing lost." If torture really did cost nothing, we'd be doing it all the time. And we wouldn't stop at waterboarding, either... as Ving Rhames' character Marsellus Wallace put it in Pulp Fiction, we'd just "get medieval." That we're not suggests some inherent awareness of torture's inherent costs as well as its possible benefits.

I can imagine several costs. First, the practice brutalizes its practitioners and by extension the society that condones it. Second, it spreads easily because it's an easy substitute for more exacting, nuanced, and effective forms of interrogation. Third, it produces a lot of false data along with the occasional actionable intelligence because the person being tortured will offer up anything to make the torture stop.

Let's look at two extremes. First, we torture wholesale. By doing so, we extract every bit of meaningful intelligence the subjects have in their minds. But we also incur enormous costs, as detailed above, including so much false information that the real leads are largely obscured and rendered useless in the process. Conclusion: wholesale torture doesn't make sense.

Second, we do everything we can to make interrogations pleasant. We keep the subjects in five star hotel rooms; we feed them three gourmet meals a day; we submit questions to them only with their express consent and desist the moment they tell us they're tired. We incur none of the costs detailed above. But we get no useful intelligence, either.

It seems, then, that somewhere in the middle lies an optimum balance -- tactics tough enough to be effective (what is torture?) without being counterproductive (does it work?). And the fact that those tactics are effective without being counterproductive enables our society to justify them, and to bear them, as an ugly necessity.

Torture offers benefits, but also costs. Opponents ignore the former; proponents, the latter. The uncomfortable truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness: Part 3, Solutions

1. Many Causes

In the first post in this three-part series, I discussed the roots of Arab Muslim sickness: failure; blaming an external party for that failure; implicit belief in one's own powerlessness; rebellion against that sense of powerlessness by demonstrating an ability to hurt the external party; chosen means (suicide bombs) that can only cause my condition to worsen; more suicide bombs; cultural stagnation and moral depravity; repeat. In the second part, I discussed these roots as they manifest themselves in Palestinian culture and ongoing failure. The question I'd like to address here is, what can the west do to cure, or at least contain the spread of, the sickness?

We need to start by asking what conditions permit the propagation of the disease. The question is initially daunting, because there seem to be so many factors at work: among them, the nature of Islam; Arab history and culture; political repression and economic despair; the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And many others.

Take a step back, though, and you'll find there's some good news here. Because although the causes of the disease are many, they aren't redundant. That is to say, if we can find a way to inhibit even one causal factor, we can dramatically reduce the incidence and effects of the disease.

Think malaria for a moment. What causes it? Malaria parasites? Mosquitoes that carry the parasite? Mosquitoes biting people? Swamps where the mosquitoes breed? The climate that permits the swamps?

All of the above. But you don't need to (and anyway couldn't) eliminate every one of these causes to dramatically reduce the incidence of the disease. If you can attack even one cause cost effectively, the benefits can be significant.

As it happens, pesticide-treated nets, each of which costs just a few dollars, seem to be the most cost effective way of bringing malaria under control. Is there an equivalent we can bring to bear on the sickness propagating from Muslim Arabia?

There is indeed, and it's the one the Bush administration has at best ignored and more often undermined: reducing our dependence on petroleum.

2. The Most Treatable Cause

As NYT columnist Tom Friedman has pointed out in The First Law of Petropolitics, there is an inverse relationship between freedom and the price of a barrel of oil. If Friedman is right about this inverse relationship -- and logic, common sense, and empirical evidence indicate he is -- and President Bush is right in thinking that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is a lack of freedom in the Arab world -- then Bush's implementation of the so-called "Freedom Agenda" is impossible without a dramatic decrease in the price of energy.

I think Bush is right in believing that repression contributes to terrorism. And I think Friedman is right is suggesting high oil prices contribute to repression. But the link between oil prices and terrorism isn't just indirect, in that petrodollars prop up some of the world's most repressive (and dangerous) regimes. Petrodollars also directly contribute to the spread of the disease. Saudi Arabia uses them to fund madrasses that inculcate children with intolerance and hatred of the west. Iran uses them to arm Hezbollah -- "The Party of God" -- in Lebanon and pursue nuclear weapons of its own.

The most important US security imperative today is to reduce the price of a barrel of oil. We can't hope to contain the disease by killing mosquitoes one by one. We have to drain the swamp. For how to do it, read Gasaholic Communists.

If we succeed in reducing the price of oil, all our other initiatives against the disease -- public relations, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and military, can succeed. If we fail in the primary imperative, we will fail in everything else.

3. Iraq is a Distraction

Is there reason for optimism?

Some. The efforts of the Bush administration remind me of what Winston Churchill is supposed to have said about America: "You can always count on America to do the right thing... after it has exhausted all the other possibilities."

The Bush administration certainly is exhausting those other possibilities with Iraq. What were our first priorities after toppling the Taliban? Capturing or killing Bin Laden and his #2, al-Zawahiri and building a stable Afghanistan. This morning, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, al-Zawahiri released another video. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, opium production is at record levels and the Taliban is resurgent. By diverting so many military, intelligence, financial, and other resources to Iraq, Bush reduced the chances that we would successfully complete the dismantlement of al Qaeda and the reconstruction of Afghanistan. We can argue about the relevance of Iraq in the overall battle against the disease of Islamofascism. But I don't see how we can argue that, in attempting three monumental undertakings simultaneously instead of only two, the Bush administration dramatically increased the likelihood that we will fail at all of them.

I believe Iraq is the greatest foreign policy mistake in US history. We lost many more people in Vietnam, and we were there for longer. But how did General Abazaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, put it recently? "If we leave, they will follow us." No one ever said that about the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld famously asked in a leaked memorandum whether we had metrics to determine whether we were capturing and killing more terrorists in Iraq than we were creating. As far as I know, the administration never provided an answer. But maybe they didn't need to. Thanks, Paul, for the painfully hilarious link.

4. Getting Out of Iraq

How do we get out of Iraq? First, we have to change our rhetoric. The story we need to tell the world -- and ourselves -- is that "we already won the war; the rest is up to Iraqis. If they prefer civil war to unity and prosperity, we can't help them. If by their actions they indicate that they prefer a breakup of the country, we won't stand in their way. Our task was to topple Hussein and verify no WMD; that mission has been accomplished."

Back in April, I suggested breaking the country into three. In May, Joe Biden endorsed the idea, too. Since then, events on the ground have continued to create momentum for a three-state solution.

A breakup won't be smooth. Probably there will be a civil war, worse than the relatively low intensity Sunni/Shiite conflict already raging. But if the Sunnis and Shiites want to fight each other, why are we trying to stop them (and how long can we keep them from going at it)? Cold-blooded realpolitik suggests that we'd be better off with Islamofascists divided along sectarian fault lines rather than being brought together, as Hezbollah has partly managed to do by inspiring Egyptians and Saudis.

But most likely, we're going to waste another two and half years in Iraq. I believe it's politically, emotionally, and psychologically impossible for the architects of the war to acknowledge the magnitude of their mistake. Instead, they'll try to hold on and leave it to the next administration to get us out of there -- at which point, they will write in their memoirs that we had turned the corner and Iraq was won, but that the cowards in the new administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

There is a similar school of thought on Vietnam: that by 1972, we had destroyed the Viet Cong and rearmed the South sufficiently so they could stand up to the North. But after the Cambodian incursion came to light, Congress cut funding for the whole enterprise and the South was then helpless against the continued Soviet and Chinese supplied onslaught from the Northy. If Bush can just keep us in Iraq until the next administration takes over, he will have created the conditions for a similar fig leaf argument for himself.

It's possible, though, that things will get so much worse so rapidly in Iraq that Bush will be denied his fig leaf. In August, the Marines concluded that Anbar province, including much of the Sunni Triangle, is a lost cause.

And the troops we've repositioned to save Baghdad must have left a vacuum behind them. The news coming out of Iraq is only going to get worse.

So sooner or later, we'll get out. We'll rethink our strategy and refocus our resources. Here's what I hope to see then.

5. After Iraq

First, meaningful steps to reduce the price of oil (actually, I hope we don't have to wait years before implementing those steps, but I'm sure we will).

Second, expanded but refined law enforcement and intelligence work. Assassinations, kidnappings, and interrogations on a small, discreet, deniable scale (actually, I don't want to see the assassinations, kidnappings, and interrogations -- if I do, it means it's been done sloppily and will be counterproductive).

Third, devotion of appropriate resources to securing loose nukes. Absent WMD, al Qaeda doesn't threaten our civilization (only our own overreactions and stupidity can do that). But there's little doubt that if AQ could acquire and deploy WMD against America, they would. The Soviet Union had the means but was deterrable; AQ is undeterrable but lacks the means. We must make those means unavailable to them.

Fourth, less bombastic war rhetoric. If Bush really believes we're engaged in the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," why did he commit so few troops to Iraq? If Rumsfeld really believes “we face similar challenges [to the rise of Nazi Germany] in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism,” why is the country not mobilized as was during World War II?

Fifth, more cleverness, less venting of rage. It's natural to want to lash out after a terrorist provocation might seem to offer a temporary salve for our collective ego -- this was the emotional underpinning for the march into Iraq -- but ego ought to have little to do with our objectives. It may be that we'll have to exercise patience and restraint in the face of horrible provocations. Doing so will be difficult, but as James Fallows argued in the September Atlantic Monthly, our own overreactions will be the biggest obstacle to victory in this fight (thanks David Terrenoire for the link).

Sixth, examination of new approaches to Israel and Palestine, based (ironically) on the rise of extremism in the region. It used to be that repressive Arab regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia used Israel to distract their populations from the government's domestic repression, inability to provide jobs, and other failings. Now, hatred of Israel is fueling the rise of Iran and Hezbollah -- the hatred is slipping out of the control of these governments and becoming more dangerous than it is useful. Accordingly, conditions might exist for accommodation from Egypt, Saudi, and elsewhere. A long shot, but possible.

Finally, we may need to reconsider the feasibility of bringing freedom to people the name of whose religion, which provides the core of their identity, means "submission."

6. A Different Metaphor

Less than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world is again engaged in a great game for power. Our opponent this time is not communism, but Islamofascism. But the roots of that earlier conflict provide a framework for understanding the nature of this new one, and could, if sensibly applied, help us to prevail once again.

Communism was an ideology that by its own tenets was guaranteed to fail in competition with the west. Command economies are inefficient; they cannot win in a capitalist foot race any more than a runner who insists on tying his shoelaces together can win against an opponent operating under no such self-imposed handicaps. The only way for communism to "win," then, was to sabotage its opponents. Married as it was to its own stunted ideology, it really had no choice.

Islamofascism is the same. A society that eliminates half its productive workforce by refusing to permit women to drive or vote or go out unaccompanied by men cannot compete against societies that lack similar constraints. The unconstrained societies will inevitably prosper and progress; the constrained societies will inevitably weaken by comparison. The only choice for the constrained is to try to bring the unconstrained down.

For a while, anyway. In 1989 I wrote, "'Workers of the world, unite!' was the birth cry of communism; 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em,' sounds like its death knell." If we effectively contain Islamofascism, there is hope that eventually it will undergo a similar metamorphosis (for possible philosophical models for modernized Islam, read George Packer's excellent "The Moderate Martyr" in the Sept 11 issue of The New Yorker).

If that metamorphosis does occur, the Arab psyche can rightly be flush with pride at its own positive achievements. The sense of indignity, humiliation, and helplessness in which the disease has taken root will pass, and the Arab middle east could become a productive part of the 21st century. If it doesn't, the Arab middle east will become an isolated seventh century theme park. Geopolitically, either outcome would be acceptable to the west.

What's most encouraging, but in some ways, most nerve-wracking, is that the outcome is largely up to us. Islamofascism appeals outside the Arab Middle East only by contrast to the perceived depredations of the west. If we stop perverting the implementation of our ideals by our addiction to oil, if we rediscover our better, truer selves, if we choose our means carefully, the disease will go into remission.

To put it another way: Islamofascism can't win this struggle. Only we can lose it.

The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness: Part 2, Palestine

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the roots of Arab Muslim sickness: failure; blaming an external party for that failure; implicit belief in one's own powerlessness; rebellion against that sense of powerlessness by demonstrating an ability to hurt the external party; chosen means (suicide bombs) that can only cause one's conditions to worsen; more suicide bombs; cultural stagnation and moral depravity; repeat.

We all evaluate our own worth in part by reference to others, and how do Arabs feel when they compare themselves with Israel, a thriving democracy with no oil and yet a first world economy, a world class technology sector (in May, Warren Buffet invested four billion dollars for an 80% share of Iscar, an Israeli precision tool manufacturer. When Buffet invests ten figures in an Arab manufacturer... well, it's hard to imagine, and that's the point), and a military that has repeatedly fought off its numerically superior Arab neighbors?

The comparison must be painful for all Arabs, but particularly for the Palestinians, given their greater proximity. Do they have a legitimate grievance? Yes. Thousands were indeed displaced, many of them deliberately expelled, during Israel's war of independence. They live in refugee camps in Lebanon, as second class citizens in Jordan, and under Israeli military rule in Gaza and the West Bank.

But it's been nearly sixty years, and Palestinians have a decision to make. Nurse their grievance, indulge in self-righteousness by clinging to maximalist demands, and gradually worsen their circumstances and diminish their future... or compromise and achieve something concrete?

Sadly, Palestinians have repeatedly chosen the first course. The tragedy of their society is that they have become all about means, and no longer care about ends. Or, to put it another way, their means have become their end.

If the end Palestinians willed were an independent state, they could have had it many times. Most recently, all they needed to do was choose hunger strikes as their weapon instead of suicide bombs. Armed with the unique benefit of a politically powerful and favorably disposed movement (Peace Now) within the country that occupies the land they claim, and the parallel advantage of numerous sympathizers in the UN and Europe, hunger strikers could have won the Palestinians a two-state solution forty years ago.

If an objective is repeatedly attainable, and someone repeatedly fails to attain it, at some point it's fair to ask whether the party really wanted that objective to begin with... or whether, in fact, their objective was always something else. The Palestinians have had many opportunities to have their own state. They do not. What is it, then, that they really want?

Primarily, to hurt Israel. Palestinian self worth is so low that the society can salve its collective ego only through the basest refutation of a sense of powerlessness: an ability to hurt their enemy. Menacham Begin is famous for saying, "I fight, therefore I am;" the Palestinian equivalent has become, "I can hurt you, therefore I matter."

It follows that a negotiated solution with the Palestinians is impossible. Israel couldn't even give the Palestinians what they profess to want, because what they really want is not be given anything, but to take everything.

It's hard not to pity a culture like this one. Palestinians have become so obsessed with their enemy that they now define themselves exclusively by reference to that enemy. They seem to mean nothing to themselves outside their ability to blow up Israelis. They must feel there's nothing else they can achieve, and apparently there is nothing more they desire.

The status quo of military occupation, bombings, and assassinations has gone on for a long time. After many failed negotiations, Israel attempted to change that status quo by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza behind a wall. The Hamas rockets that followed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza (and those of Hezbollah, which followed Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000) have proven unilateral withdrawal to be a failure. So the status quo continues. But for how long?

If Israel can find some cost-effective way of suppressing the rocket fire as it has the suicide bombers, the status quo could continue for a long time. But if Israel can't, and the provocations continue or worsen, eventually, perhaps very soon, there will be another war.

In the next war, Israel will not attempt to occupy territories and rule local populations. It will instead drive those populations out, as indeed it did in 1947. Expulsions will probably end the peace with Egypt and Jordan. But they will prevent rockets from reaching Israel proper and eradicate the threat inside Israel's borders. Wars after that will be only against external enemies and conventional armies, an arena in which Israel has proven itself capable.

It's a bleak assessment, but I don't see alternatives. Over the course of six decades, the Palestinians have consistently demanded, explicitly and implicitly, something Israel can't give. Their circumstances have correspondingly consistently worsened. The next step in the progression of this dreadful combination of maximalist demands and worsening circumstances will be the Palestinians' loss of everything, even the territory they currently administer and de facto own by virtue of their physical presence there.

In some ways, Palestinians are like someone who owns stock that has been steadily losing value. Every day they realize they should have sold yesterday, when they could have gotten out in a better position. Now they've lost so much they prefer to hope for recovery by holding on than to lock in their losses by getting out. And so their losses worsen.

Well, there are times when things must get worse before they get better, if they can ever get better at all. The Palestinians have made such a situation for themselves. No, they weren't dealt a great hand. But they are responsible for the way they've played it, and therefore for the increasingly miserable outcome of the game.

Next week: Part 3, Solutions

Rumsfeld Redux

Not to worry, the second part of The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness is on the way. But first...

Today Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to the American Legion's annual national convention in Salt Lake City. You can read more here and here.

The excerpts I've read are depressing. For example, the Secretary asked, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”

Quick question: does anyone here believe vicious extremists can be appeased?

I guess not. But then why... oh, I get it. The question is rhetorical. Its real meaning is, "If you disagree with our policy, you must favor the appeasement of vicious extremists."

Even if you think the Bush administration has been doing a fine job (took a lot of discipline not to say "heckuva job" there) of protecting the nation, isn't this kind of simple-minded demagoguery off-putting?

Back when I was in law school, I was taught that if you can win on the facts, argue the facts. If the facts are unhelpful, attack the credibility of the witness. That's what this is. If things were going well in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of the administration would rightly trumpet progress and success. But they're not. They're attacking their critics, instead. I guess they feel they have no choice. And maybe they're right. After all, what else are they going to talk about?

Rumsfeld also said, "This enemy is serious, lethal and relentless. But this is not well recognized or fully understood.”

Show of hands, please: anyone here who doesn't recognize and fully understand the serious, lethal, and relentless nature of our enemies?

Okay, good: we all agree on the nature and severity of the threat. But then why... oh, I get it. The administration senses it's vulnerable to a discussion of how it's protecting the nation. If you disagree with how, the idea is that you must not really understand what's going on. The implication, of course, is that you're... an appeaser!

Back when I was in the CIA, I was taught, "Deny everything, admit nothing, make counter accusations." Refusing to discuss what's going wrong in Iraq and how we might make it less wrong while accusing your critics of appeasement is straight out of the playbook. If I weren't so disgusted, I'd be proud.

The Secretary claims that the American news media is part of the problem because it tends to emphasize the negative rather than the positive: for example, there was more coverage of what happened at Abu Ghraib than to Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith's winning the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I feel tremendous gratitude and respect to all our fighting men and women, and particularly to anyone who has been awarded the CMH. From the heart, thank you, Sgt. Smith.

But I have a feeling that if misdeeds at Abu Ghraib received more coverage than Sgt. Smith's heroism elsewhere, it was probably because people rightly sensed the somewhat larger geopolitical ramifications of what happened at Abu Ghraib. I don't doubt that there's bias in the media, but suggesting that bias is what put and kept Abu Ghraib on the map to the exclusion of stories of individual heroism is silly at best.

For people who claim to have all the right ideas, Rumsfeld and company come off seeming awfully insecure. Do they know something that we... do?

The Roots of Arab Muslim Sickness: Part 1, Introduction

Not all Arab Muslims are terrorists. But most terrorists are Arab Muslims. It's therefore worth asking what in the Arab Muslim world is producing this uniquely widespread cultural sickness. After all, if we don't know the cause of the disease, how can we hope to cure it -- or, barring a cure, contain its spread?

Most of the explanations I've come across cite one of two factors, or a combination of both. First, poverty; second, western foreign policy.

I don't think poverty and western foreign policy are irrelevant to Arab Muslim terrorism, but they're no more the cause of the disease than oxygen is the cause of a fire. There's been plenty of talk about oxygen. I want to talk about the combustible material and what is causing it to ignite.

Muslim Arabia was once a thriving culture, a center of trade, an explorer in science. Today it is not. I may be wrong, and I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me if I'm missing something, but I'm unaware of any significant scientific, artistic, economic, or other such development emanating from the Arab middle east. What patents have issued? What literature has been written? What products are made and exported? From fashion to philosophy, I know of no contributions.

It seems that all the Arab middle east has to offer is what by happenstance exists under ground there: easily accessible, plentiful, high quality petroleum. A godsend, you would think. But in fact a curse. The countries "blessed" with oil did nothing to achieve it, so it can't be a source of pride. And Arab fecklessness becomes significantly harder to explain in the presence of all that black gold and the hundreds of billions of dollars it generates.

The question being asked over there, I imagine, must be this: "Why, despite our history, our numbers, and our oil, are we so moribund?"

If Arabs are indeed asking this question, the answer they've arrived at seems to be, "It's not our fault. After all, there's nothing wrong with us. How could there be? We have a rich history. We follow the one true religion. And we have all that oil. External forces must be to blame."

As with all good conspiracy theories, there's a germ of truth in this one. The United States has a long history of backing some of the world's most oppressive regimes as long as they're willing to pump oil (the imperative and the policy remain, despite President Bush's recent rhetorical veneer about promoting democracy in the middle east). If the Arab middle east had no oil, the area would have the same strategic importance to the west as sub-Saharan Africa, and we would have the luxury of policies driven by our ideals rather than by our addictions. But the oil does exist, our addiction does distort our ideals, and it's understandable that citizens in these repressive countries would resent the United States for supporting their oppressors.

But the list of countries with plenty of poverty and heartfelt grievances about being oppressed by the US is long, and for the most part it's only Muslim Arabs who have responded with unrelenting suicide bombing. What makes Arab Muslims different from all the people of the world who are more interested in getting ahead than in nursing a grudge?

I don't know the specific answer, but I suspect it's rooted somewhere in the nexus of Arab history and Muslim religion. As for the general answer, the psychology is clear: it's painful to acknowledge that a failure is your own fault, and comforting to believe that the failure is the fault of some Other. If the failures are monumental, so too must be the treachery of that Other, and therefore the hatred the perceived treachery justifies and breeds.

The problem with concluding that something isn't your fault is that it's the same as concluding it isn't your responsibility. And concluding that you have no responsibility for something you care about is the same as concluding you have no power over it. The Arab Muslim psychology, it seems to me, is therefore one of extreme powerlessness.

The human psyche abhors a sense of powerlessness and will rebel against it. And the most fundamental, primitive way of asserting a sense of power is by demonstrating a power to hurt. I can't get what I want, I can't persuade you to change your behavior by positive means... but I can still matter to you, and convince myself of my own power, if only I can hurt you.

This, then, is the vicious cycle in which the Muslim Arab world finds itself: I am victimized by outside forces. Nothing is my fault, meaning I am powerless. Being powerless is abhorrent and robs me of my dignity. I will recover my dignity by hurting the outside forces responsible for my misery. But hurting others does nothing to change my circumstances, so I am left with nothing to care about but my ability to hurt. And thus my sole modern contribution to the world, my innovation, my emblem, my identity, is the suicide bomber. And what was once a thriving culture becomes merely a death cult.

Next week: Part 2, Palestine

Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon

It's a little hard to understand what's going on in Lebanon right now, but here's what I think.

Hezbollah wasn't expecting the magnitude of Israel's attack, and over the month of the war sustained significant losses.

Israel wasn't expecting the ferocity of Hezbollah's resistance, and over the month of the war realized it couldn't break Hezbollah without sustaining heavy losses.

Hezbollah was afraid that continued Israeli attacks would erode its position in Lebanon. Israel was afraid that Hezbollah would continue to fire rockets at Israel and inflict casualties on Israeli troops, further denting the IDF's reputation and enhancing that of Hezbollah. So both sides were looking for a way to stop the fighting, and that's why they accepted the latest UN resolution.

But the resolution calls for Hezbollah's disarmament and removal from southern Lebanon. If the motivated, capable IDF wasn't able to achieve such an outcome, it's hard to imagine any UN force, or the feckless Lebanese army, doing it instead.

In other words, Israel has accepted a resolution that it knows will leave Hezbollah armed and in place in southern Lebanon -- exactly the conditions Israel went to war to change.

I don't know exactly how to explain the situation, but I think Israel's thinking goes like this:

The optimistic view was nicely expressed by Michael Young, the opinion editor at The Daily Star, an English-language newspaper published in Beirut. Young writes, “For the next two or three years, Hezbollah will be like the Salvation Army, tied up in rebuilding. But the party cannot put Shiites through such trauma again for the foreseeable future, maybe a decade, which means its ability to attack Israel will be limited. The reason Hezbollah is so eager to rebuild is that they know the condition of Shiites today could turn the community against them if it’s not dealt with effectively.”

The great unknown is what the Lebanese population, Shiites included, makes of Hezbollah's role in the war. Hezbollah's declared aims were the return of Lebanese prisoners of war and of disputed territory called the Shebaa farms. Neither of these aims was achieved, at a cost of horrific destruction in Lebanon. Even if Hezbollah does a magnificent job of helping people rebuild, will they forgive Hezbollah for provoking the destruction in the first place?

If not, then maybe the combination of Hezbollah's weakened military condition and weakened political base will force it to make compromises with the Lebanese government that will weaken it further still. Maybe.

The pessimistic view would hold that, with massive Iranian aid, Hezbollah will quickly rebuild, rearm, and retrench, and then, at some point in the future, renew its attacks. The question is, what will Israel do then?

With a new casus belli, Israel will go to war again, this time with better tactics based on a new understanding of Hezbollah's military capabilities. At this point, Israel would claim that it had been mistaken to put its trust in the UN force, which had proven itself unable to fulfill its responsibilities in disarming Hezbollah and removing it from southern Lebanon. Israel would warn UN forces in the south to leave, and host countries, not having any political reason to explain casualties to voters, would comply. Israel would then use leaflets to warn the entire Lebanese population south of the Litani river that after a certain date anyone south of the Litani will be treated as an enemy fighter and killed. Israel would then bombard the south massively and indiscriminately, cut off and lay siege to whoever survived the bombardment, mop up what was left, and defacto annex a depopulated southern Lebanon. The destruction and displacement would be far worse than what just occurred.

Israel must already be concerned that its stalemate with Hezbollah will embolden its other enemies. It won't allow another draw, meaning Lebanon won't survive the next war.

I hope the optimists are right.

Islamofascism

As visitors to HOTM know, I'm no fan of President Bush. But he certainly got it right yesterday when he said of Wednesday's foiled terrorist plot, "This was a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists."

In some ways, Bush's construction was odd. After all, according to the administration, we're in a Global War on Terror -- or, if you prefer, in a Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Why, then, didn't the president say, "This was a stark reminder that this nation is at war with terror and violent extremism?"

Because terror is a tactic and extremism a mindset, and wars can be fought against neither. Real wars, as opposed to the "moral equivalent" or other metaphorical variety, can only be fought against human actors. And the human actors who are in fact the enemies of our civilization are defined and identified by the nexus of Muslim religion (Islam is the only true way, everyone else is an infidel who needs to be killed or converted, etc.) and fascist ideology (the state should be all powerful and control the personal behavior of all its citizens, who exist to serve the state). Hats off, then, to President Bush for, whether deliberately or instinctively, correctly identifying the enemy: Islamic fascism (the terminology I prefer is Islamofascism and Islamofascists because the focus feels tighter to me, but this is a quibble).

The president's new terminology is welcome not just because it's correct, but for other reasons, as well. The language of tactics is the language of law enforcement. Acts are illegal, not the people who do them. From running a red light to bank robbery all the way to murder, the law prohibits acts. War is different. We didn't fight World War II against Panzer or kamikaze attacks. We fought it against the Germans and Japanese. If we really are in a war now, and I believe we are, I hope other leaders and the media will take their cue from the president and stop obscuring the issue with language that smacks of law enforcement. War is the sword, law enforcement the shield. They are different tools and we ought to be clear about which we're using and for what purpose.

Another benefit of using the proper nomenclature is that doing so tends to linguistically wrongfoot the Islamofascists. Monikers like Islamicists, Militant Islam, militants, Mujahadeen, and jihadis are points of pride to these people. Why are we acceding to their attempts at self-branding? They're islamofascists. Let's attach that powerful word -- fascism -- to its proper recipients and let them explain why they're really something else.

Iraq: It's Over.

A year ago I wrote an opinion piece for the Philadelphia City Paper that asked how and when a society would admit a war was lost. Now we're finding out.

Don't think it's over yet? Remember, whatever officials say in public, they're probably an order of magnitude more pessimistic in private.

Here's General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, testifying before the Senate last week: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”

Look at the qualifiers in that last clause. It's "possible" that Iraq "could" "move towards" civil war. My guess is that General Abazaid, mindful of what happened to then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki when Shinseki publicly disagreed with SecDef Rumsfeld, is protecting his political flank (he also described himself as "optimistic"). But if the general is talking this way in public, on the record, what do you think he's saying in private? What do you think he really believes?

Also, the outgoing British ambassador to Iraq says in a leaked memo that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely" than a stable democracy.

Okay, leave aside the pronouncements, publicly hedged and privately leaked. What's going on on the ground?

The Economist reports Shiite and Sunni militias are dividing Baghdad into de facto ethnic sectors. In the former Yugoslavia, this was known as "ethnic cleansing." The UN reports that over 100 Iraqis a day being killed in sectarian strife, mostly in Baghdad. (It'll be interesting to see at what point a public consensus emerges that what's happening in Iraq is indeed a civil war. Remember, the Pentagon at first refused to call what we were fighting following the fall of Baghdad an "insurgency." But events have a way of slipping past linguistic attempts to bottle them up, or deny them.)

Not long ago, the administration was taken with the so-called "Oil Spot Strategy," in which we would focus our efforts on improving conditions in already relatively untroubled parts of Iraq, then extend those improvements like a spreading oil spot to more troubled regions. I don't know whether the strategy was seriously attempted or whether it could really work, but it seems things have gotten so bad in Baghdad that the administration is afraid the city will act like caustic detergent on whatever oil spots might drop around it. Now, to try to halt Baghdad's slide, we're sending more troops to the city, and the oil spot approach seems forgotten.

I'm not a military man, but it's hard to see the increase as grounds for General Abazaid's professed optimism. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman describes the increase, to about 135,000, as a "sustained spike." "You're going to see that spike," he said last week, "that is a sustained spike, for a while, and you're going to still have force rotations that take place."

Quick question: is a "sustained spike" the same as a "long term development?" Just asking.

But when do we really know the game is over? Shouldn't we give our efforts just a little more time, maybe another six months? For an answer, google "six months Iraq." I've been curious about this apparently critical moving six month window for years now. Tom Friedman of the New York Times, who I think ought to be in charge of US foreign policy, has referred to it pretty much since the war began, and at some point I started to suspect that Friedman was unconsciously moving the magical six month window forward because he couldn't face that the war was lost. But in his most recent op-ed piece, called "Time for Plan B," Friedman writes, "It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war." There's no mention of six months in the piece. Friedman is writing about now.

How will things end? Check out "What do we do about Iraq."

Got Noise?

When did the world get so noisy?

I'm staying at the Hilton in NYC now, and they've got televisions installed in every elevator. For 22 floors, you have to listen to the urgent cadences of a video newscaster. Airports are doing this, too -- more and more televisions are being installed in lounges and waiting areas. And they're ubiquitous in hotel gyms. They've even got them on the Heathrow Express into London (although there, at least, there are "quiet cars," as well).

I wonder if this "all TV, all the time" trend isn't indicative of an overall move away from the notion of personal responsibility. Sensible people know they might have to wait at the airport, or inside an elevator, or on a train, and come prepared with their own (mercifully silent) reading material. If you forget your own material, you might have to endure a bit of ennui -- which should remind you to be less forgetful next time. Now, not to worry, you're not responsible for the entertainment; it's being provided for you. You don't have to remember a thing.

(You'd think that with the constant barrage of news we'd be be a well-informed society, but it doesn't feel that way to me. Maybe it's because the barrage is telecast, not printed.)

Cars beep constantly, too, warning us of an open door, a key in the ignition, and unbuckled seat belt. Makes sense, I guess... after all, what's a little omnipresent irritation if we can save one person from locking his keys in the car?

(Think personal responsibility again...)

Back to airports: why do the electric carts that ferry people through terminals have to be accompanied by such shrill beeping? At first I thought it was a (dubious) safety feature, to help prevent people from getting run down, but then I realized no, that doesn't make sense, the driver could easily slow for or otherwise avoid pedestrians. The purpose of the incessant beeping, I realized, is to get pedestrians to clear a path so the carts can go faster. The implicit tradeoff is silence for speed. An entire airport full of people has to suffer so a few lazy asses can get toted around a little more quickly? Who ran those cost-benefit numbers?

On airplanes, you have to listen to at least ten minutes of announcements after you take off. Most of it has to do with selling you something -- food, drinks, an in-flight movie, duty-free merchandise. So let me get this straight: I've paid for the ticket, and now that I'm a captive audience, you're subjecting me to ten minutes of in-your-face (actually, in-your-ears) advertising? When is one of the airlines going to catch on and start billing itself as the "quiet, haven, sanctuary, advertisement-free" alternative? It's probably just a coincidence that the big carriers are in and out of bankruptcy.

There's music playing everywhere, too. It used to be just in stores and restaurants. Now it's in restrooms, too. Which is great, if you require trumpets to accompany the act of urinating. At a Wild Oats supermarket in Cincinnati, there was music not just in the store, but in the parking lot, too, where they'd installed outdoor speakers that were supposed to look like rocks. I guess you wouldn't want to detract from the inherent naturalness of parking lot music with an artificial-looking speaker. What would happen if I had to endure the two-minute walk to my car... in silence? Would I dislike the store? Would I buy less of their food? Has Wild Oats actually studied this issue, or do they just assume that more people want more music in more places?

A discreet elevator door chime is a good idea -- lets you know when the elevator has arrived in case you didn't see it. But what happened to the discretion? The Los Angeles Bel-Age elevator chimes sound like submarine klaxons. The otherwise elegant Boston Ritz Carlton chimes sound like a pair of live cymbals clanging together over your head.

I guess there's a law requiring trucks to issue a horrible, piercing, repetitive beep when they back up. Has anyone done a study on how many injuries and lives this "feature" has saved, versus how much irritation and loss of quality of life it's produced?

Suburban lawns look serene from the interior of a car. But walk through suburbia during the day, and you'll find the serenity is entirely visual: the cacophony of mowers and blowers that produces that visual effect will ruin your walk and drive you right back into the relative sanctuary of your car. To make suburbia look pretty, we've made it sound awful. Was this choice conscious? Does it make sense?

The noise isn't just constant; it's also loud. My guess is, the volume is jacked up to get through to the hard of hearing. But is making everything loud enough to be heard by the hearing-impaired fair to the non-impaired? Is burdening the majority of the population to provide an arguable benefit to a minority sensible? Are these questions even being asked?

Technology has offered us a choice that didn't exist for previous generations: silence, or aural clutter. As a society, we seem increasingly to default to the latter. I know I'm a curmudgeon before my time but... I hate it. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you ought to.

The Middle East and America

I don't fully understand the connection between Israel's war with Hezbollah and the Bush administration's efforts to foster democracy in the region. But a few things concern me.

Sometimes I feel that President Bush believes if he says it, it makes it so. He announced a mission to Mars that was immediately forgotten. He claims America is addicted to oil, and then suggested we would be cured by technology, with no meaningful follow-through. And he has made a centerpiece of his presidency the export of democracy to the Arab middle east -- indeed, to "end tyranny in our time."

The problem with exporting democracy to the Arab middle east is that there are long-standing institutional reasons for our support of Arab dictators -- even those that are our enemies, like the House of Saud. We need oil -- we are addicted to it, apparently -- and so we back regimes that will supply it to us. And even apart from oil, we fear the alternative to the relatively stable, oil-pumping dictators we back: Islamofascists.

The problem is, President Bush seems to have lost sight of these two fundamentals -- we need oil, the elected Arab alternative might be Islamofascism -- in promoting democracy in the region. With Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Ahmadinejad in Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it's hard to be sanguine about the prospects of further elections in the Arab and Persian middle east.

It seems to me we've changed the policy without changing the fundamentals. This is like trying to move a house without touching the foundation. All you'll get is collapse.

The real choice is to back dictators to the hilt, or get off oil. We can't have it both ways.

I don't know what will be the outcome of Israel's war with Hezbollah. My guess is that it will spread, to include Syria and possibly Iran. The US could be pulled in, too. I would also guess that we'll see disruptions in the supply of oil, which will raise the price, which will encourage us to use less. Which, with some will, imagination, and guts, we could have done through taxes instead of a war.

We're going to get off oil. The only question is how. Will we do it for ourselves, gradually, sensibly, and relatively safely? Or will we wait to have an oil diet imposed on us by war and other outside events?

Door #2, no doubt. How sad to know exactly what to do, and yet lack the will to do it.

Gay Marriage, Flag Burning, And Congress Again...

The pace of the Last Assassin tour hasn't left me nearly the time I ordinarily devote to the news, but a few items have caught my attention.

The Republican-controlled Senate has now tried twice to amend the Constitution -- first, to prohibit gay marriage; second, to prohibit flag burning (so many prohibitions! It's enough to make you miss the Bill of Rights). We'll get to the substance of these issues in a moment, but first, let's pause to consider our government's apparent priorities.

The Senate's time is limited (not limited enough, if you ask me), so you might expect Senators to spend their limited time only on the issues that matter most to the nation. A reasonable shortlist might include the war in Iraq, the war against Islamofascism, securing loose nukes, reforming the tax code, making America more energy independent, immigration reform, redressing growing income disparities, protecting the environment... I'm sure I'm missing various priorities, and I'm sure reasonable people will differ on the inclusion of various items and on their proper order. But still. Gay marriage and flag burning are the foremost crises of the day?

Let's see if we can get to the heart of the matter.

Gay marriage: some people approach this issue from a religious perspective. I can't argue with them. If your position is, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," there's nothing to discuss.

The nonreligious objection to gay marriage seems to be that marriage has traditionally been between a loving, committed man and a woman, and that we shouldn't lightly alter what most people agree is the fundamental fabric of human society.

I respect this argument, although my take is slightly different. I believe the fundamental fabric of human society is marriage between two loving, committed adults. That the two adults in question have traditionally been a woman and a man reflects not some necessary element of society building, but rather that most people are heterosexual and that our laws and mores are therefore in part a reflection of heterosexual prejudice.

So although I'm a conservative, and wouldn't lightly alter marriage or any other fundamental societal building block, I don't see gay marriage as a significant alteration at all. The opposite, in fact: because I believe that loving, committed couples are the molecules that make society strong, I want to encourage more of them. Permitting gay marriage seems an excellent way to do so.

I think we can therefore safely say that the HOTM on gay marriage is one's take on this question: what is the fundamental building block of society? Marriage between a loving, committed man and a woman? Or marriage between two loving, committed adults? If you answer "man and woman," you'll be against gay marriage. If you answer, "two adults," you'll be for it.

Flag burning: I note in the introduction to this blog that I believe our political opinions and religious beliefs are located in the same place in our brain. That the sight of a burning flag can cause anger comparable to the outrage produced by the desecration of a religious symbol supports this notion. But the fact that the outrage is real and legitimate shouldn't prevent us from asking a question: is the desecration worth banning?

I tend to approach policy in cost/benefit terms. How many flag burnings are there? How many people are even aware of them of them when they occur? How much pain do they produce? Measured against: How much would it cost to amend the Constitution to ban them (direct costs of getting the amendment through plus the cost of lost opportunities)?

Because I think people who burn flags are cranks whose provocations say far more about the cranks themselves than about anything the flag symbolizes, I rate the cost of flag burning as low -- far lower than the cost of an amendment. If your sense of outrage at the sight of a burning flag is high enough, though, the cost of an amendment might be lower, in which case you'll want to amend. I think this is the HOTM on flag burning.

So maybe amendment proponents believe that what makes marriage fundamental to societal health is the institution's exclusively heterosexual provenance. And maybe proponents are also sufficiently outraged by flag burning to think it worth banning.

Of course, there's another possibility.

It's possible that amendment proponents don't give a damn about married gays or burning flags. It's possible they're simply trying to distract voters from the real news of the day, namely Iraq, by getting the media to cover a Senatorial sideshow instead. It's possible they're trying to mobilize the right-wing base a few months ahead of the November midterm elections. It's possible that, regardless of your views on gay marriage and flag burning, the Senate is insulting your intelligence.

Perhaps I'm cynical. But I like what Oscar Wilde had to say on the subject: "That quality of seeing things as they really are is called cynicism by those who have not got it."